When I
self-published my first mystery novel, The McHenry Inheritance, nearly two years ago, I had to figure out a marketing
plan. And I have to say that doing my own marketing for the book gave me a
better understanding of why no agent wanted to touch it.
Modern
publishing, for better or worse, is mostly about the big score. Fifty years
ago, a publishing house would be willing to nurture a writer whose first book
sold five thousand copies; whose second book sold ten thousand; whose third
book sold twenty thousand; and whose fourth had a breakout and sold forty to
fifty thousand, plus drove readers to buy the earlier books.
That sort
of investment in an author is all but unheard-of these days. Agents and
publishers are looking for a book that will sell in six-figure numbers
straightaway. And in order to do that, there has to be an easily explained,
highly exploitable angle for promoting it. Call it the book’s elevator speech,
if you will.
A Good Story Is Not Enough
Saying you
have a good, compelling story is not enough. The marketing question is what
makes the book stand out from its competitors; what makes it new and fresh and
promotable.
My angle
was to promote the fly-fishing aspect of the book. Quill Gordon, my
protagonist, is a man of independent means who can go fishing whenever he
wants. The stories in the Quill Gordon Mystery series occur and will occur when
he goes on a fishing trip and gets caught up in the local drama. So promoting
the fly-fishing angle seemed logical — except that I’m starting to think it
wasn’t.
From the
standpoint of selling books, there are two problems with that approach. The
first is that there aren’t that many fly fishermen and women out there, so the
appeal is being made to a small market niche to begin with. The second is that
a lot of people who fly fish don’t read fiction. And I am rapidly coming to the
belief that people who don’t read fiction are rarely going to change their ways
because a certain work of fiction happens to be about their hobby or area of
enthusiasm.
Free Advice and Worth Every Penny
Well-meaning
friends are always offering suggestions for selling the book by connecting with
the fly fishing market, but I have grave doubts. Amazon already links my books
with other fly-fishing-themed mysteries, and that probably serves to put it in
front of most of the mystery readers who are looking for that kind of book.
With the
second Gordon novel, Wash Her Guilt Away,
I’ve tried to take a broader approach to marketing the book — stressing the
character tensions, the locked-room mystery, the witches’ coven and other
aspects. I do believe I have a good story here, and I’m trying to promote it as
such in a way that will attract readers who don’t necessarily care about fly
fishing.
The ones
who do care about fly fishing will probably get more out of it, in the same way
that people who love horses and horse racing get a bit more out of a Dick
Francis novel than a horseless guy like me. But the point is, I like Dick
Francis and I believe readers can like my books without caring about fishing.
The ongoing
marketing of my mystery series will undoubtedly be a matter of trial and error,
trying a bunch of ideas and discarding the ones that don’t work. It will take
time to reach an audience, if I ever do, but that’s all right. When you
self-publish, you have a boss who can take the long view.
